Page 50 of Dream On, Ramona Riley

“I did. And it only fucked up my head even more.”

On the other end, a pregnant pause before Laurel spoke again. “Okay, either something else happened, or I’ve been bowling the wrong way.”

“You’ve been bowling at all?” Dylan asked.

“Fair point.” Another pause. “What’s going on, Dylan?”

Dylan pressed her fingers into her eyes, Ramona’s pretty face flashing in her mind. It all sounded so silly now that she thought about it.

And maybe it was. Maybe that’s what she needed to hear.

“I met someone here,” she said.

“Did you, now?” Laurel asked, her tone suddenly playful.

“No, not like that,” Dylan said. “A woman who lives here…I used to know her. Ramona. We met when we were kids.” Laurel said nothing, so Dylan told her the whole story—that summer her parents were truly incapable of caring for her, coming here with her aunt, the cottage, the beach, the cove.

Cherry and Lolli and Dolly.

The kiss.

“Holy shit,” Laurel said when Dylan was finished. “That’s a pretty amazing story. That you ran into her again.”

Dylan nodded, but Laurel’s assessment didn’t feel right—ran into her. It didn’t feel like that.

It felt bigger.

Like…fate.

Stars aligning.

“So what’s the problem?” Laurel asked.

Dylan closed her eyes, let herself go back to that night on the beach eighteen years ago. The mineral smell of the lake, the fireworks. The pretty girl. It was a good night. Maybe the best of her life.

And suddenly, Dylan did feel silly. Silly for not remembering assoon as she’d laid eyes on Ramona. But also silly for stressing about remembering at all. Ramona was her first kiss, the girl who made a horrible time in her life feel like light and laughter, if only for an hour or two. There was nothing bad about seeing Cherry again. No problem at all. It was just…surprising. Like Laurel said—amazing.

Now if only she had a clue what to do about it.

Chapter

Twelve

Ramona hadn’t seenDylan in three days.

Which was fine.

Welcome, really, if the way she’d been feeling during bowling was any indicator. She’d needed these seventy-two hours to get her shit together, focus on what she truly wanted.

And what she wanted was to meet Noelle Yang.

That was it.

Period.

She didn’t want to walk down memory lane with Lolli or Dolly or whoever the hell. She didn’t want to think about first kisses or ice-green eyes or the way Dylan had bounced a little on her toes before sending a bowling ball down the lane. And she didn’t want another dead-end tryst with Logan Adler, cunnilingus skills notwithstanding.

She just wanted to get a life, as everyone in her orbit had been imploring her to do for months now—years, if you were April Evans—and she was nothing if not accommodating to the people she loved.